The challenge
The hidden cost of spoiled milk: Tackling a $150 billion dairy dilemma
The dairy industry faces a massive problem with hygiene and control issues in the supply chain, leading to $150 billion worth of wasted milk annually. A key culprit is bacterial protease and biofilms contaminating UHT milk during processing, reducing shelf life. The challenge was compounded by the industry's reluctance to publicly acknowledge these issues, making it hard to attract investors and commercialise solutions.
Our response
Saving the dairy industry $150 billion, thanks to a clever idea and the know-how to commercialise it.
PPB Tech has developed CYBERTONGUE® Technology, which can help manage global dairy supply chains, processes and produces, clean up the supply chain, essentially save money, have more milk supply without increasing inputs and really enhance the food industry and milk quality control.
It was originally developed to detect a potentially troublesome dairy enzyme in the UHT milk production process, called plasmin protease. But the technology quickly pivoted to test for bacterial protease instead, after feedback from the industry suggested this enzyme was causing a far greater problem during dairy processing, leading to mass spoilage of product.
The innovation has since been further developed to test for the presence of biofilms along the dairy processing supply chain. Biofilms are essentially cleaning-resistant bacteria that attach to processing equipment surfaces, contaminating UHT milk and reducing its shelf life. The system is easy to use and provides laboratory quality results in just minutes.
The PPB Tech team knew the technology was addressing a big problem that the dairy industry needed to solve, but the industry wasn't talking about it in public. This made it difficult to get investors interested in an opportunity they hadn't heard about and probably didn't understand.
The results
Delivering impact and scaling success
Forging a path to market
In their quest to garner interest in their idea, and secure the funding required to make it a reality, Stephen's team took full advantage of the innovation-boosting programs on offer at CSIRO to researchers-turned-budding entrepreneurs.
"As the PPB Tech team expanded, we continued to learn," explained Stephen. "Whether that was in software development, international trade and logistics, scaling manufacture or understanding the differences between the experiences of processors in different countries and with different dairy products".
CSIRO's programs are designed to streamline the connection and collaboration process between research organisations and SMEs. This includes connecting researchers with the expertise they might need on their commercialisation journey, and multiple fund-raising/matching opportunities to support a project's success.
The ON Accelerate program brought PPB Tech a great support network and some early resources they desperately needed. Through the program, Stephen was afforded the opportunity to attend the Executive Program for Growing Companies (EPGC) at Stanford Graduate School of Business. This threw him in the deep end alongside senior executives from some of the world's great companies and organisations.
"It really helped build my confidence and understand my strengths as well as my weaknesses in business," Stephen said. "Most important of all, it allowed me to benchmark myself against other entrepreneurs and gave me the confidence I needed to keep going".
Stephen said the Kick-Start program was also vital, because it gave PPB Tech a modicum of research capacity at a time when they had none. It also supported their first extended factory test. "What we learned from that trial drove a total revamp of the technology, making it commercially viable and, along the way, winning us the Best in Class at the Australian Good Design Awards".
More recently, PPB Tech has engaged with the Venture Exchange Program (VEP), which supports entrepreneurs to engage with research and industry partners in Australia and Singapore. Stephen said the most valuable insights gleaned from VEP were from one of the external advisors, who is a venture capitalist by day.
"That external mirror really highlighted where our company has already created great value," Stephen said. "That was important for me personally because otherwise I think I would have devoted too much of our effort and resources looking for the next big thing rather than capturing the value we had already created".
Researcher-turned-entrepreneur
In 2022, PPB raised their first capital. The funds were injected into translating the original lab bench technology into a commercial product. Since then, the pace has picked up for the startup, with the company growing from a team of two to six, and sales of CYBERTONGUE® on the rise.
Stephen acknowledges the challenges along the way, and the various experts who provided support.
"When I founded the company, I had no idea what I was getting myself into or what the way forward would be," said Stephen. "It took some courage to take those first steps into the unknown. I knew that I would have to be humble, admit my ignorance and learn and adapt continuously."
Stephen said he and the team are forever grateful to all the organisers, mentors, researchers and consultants who assisted them and others through the various CSIRO programs, and he sends a huge shout-out to the peers who went through those programs with them.
When thinking about what advice to give others who might be considering participating in one of our innovation programs, Stephen said it's a matter of looking at what you need at each stage of your journey.
"ON Accelerate was critical to us before PPB Tech had any paid employees. Kick-Start was vital when we had no in-house researchers or research capacity. VEP was helpful when we had grown larger and wanted to explore markets in South East Asia. In each case, consider what any such program offers (and there are many of them, within and outside the CSIRO) and whether and how they can help you grow in the near term".
PPB Tech is headquartered in Canberra, and Stephen says the support, education, networks and resources provided by or through the Canberra Innovation Network (CBRIN) have also been absolutely critical for the company. He says it's great that there are so many touch points between CBRIN and the CSIRO innovation programs.
What's next for PPB Tech?
With the support of these valuable innovation programs, PPB Tech has been able to achieve their goal of getting their technology off the lab bench and into dairies in Oceania and Europe, where it is starting to make a difference. But they're not close to being done yet. There are many new tests they would like to develop, but the more urgent challenge is to scale sales of their unique protease tests.
"We are planning to expand our global sales, and we also need to scale to manufacturing hundreds of machines and thousands of test kits, all while maintaining quality.
"The company's aim is to transition from one-off sales to smaller companies to large contracts with nationally significant multinational enterprise customers and increasingly to systematise their processes and procedures," Stephen said.
The team knows that each of these goals will bring new challenges, but they're equipped with knowledge, skills and connections gained through the various innovation programs they've participated in, and they're ready and excited to face whatever comes next!